The GOP Brand and the 2010 Elections

Brendan Nyhan checks to see and it turns out that, yes, the GOP is hugely unpopular in historical terms:
But what does it mean for the midterms:
In short, there’s no question that the GOP party brand is in worse shape than any opposition party in recent memory. The question, however, is whether this difference in party valence will (a) persist through next November and (b) translate into fewer GOP House seats at the polls, especially once we account for the generic Congressional ballot, which should (in principle) take much of this difference into account (see Alan Abramowitz’s model, for instance). Those questions remain to be addressed.
I would say the problem for Democrats is that the voters can’t coordinate their actions. A person who would like to see the congressional Democrats brought down a notch or two may vote Republicans even if he doesn’t really want to see John Boehner take over as Speaker—especially if he thinks a GOP takeover scenario is unlikely. But if a whole bunch of people do that, then the GOP does take over, whether or not that’s what people intended to have happen. Conversely, it’s possible that Democrats will be able to improve on their current generic ballot position by focusing voters’ attention on the possibility of a Republican takeover.

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Andrew Kohut thinks so:
Tucked away in recent polls—which have documented the extraordinary anger directed at the Republican Party during the shutdown crisis—are measures of clear disappointment with the Democratic Party. The disappointment is substantial, and it raises big questions about the 2014 midterms.

Washington (AFP) - With Senate control on the line, US Democrats hope they don't get steamrolled by Republicans in Tuesday's midterms, but most signs point toward President Barack Obama's party suffering crippling election setbacks.

The Republican Party is at its strongest point in two decades heading into a midterm election, according to a new Pew Research/USA Today poll out Monday, the latest daunting sign for Democrats heading into campaign season.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. mid-term elections are like war without shooting: They allow voters to vent their hostility on the president’s party, without anyone getting seriously hurt.
Since 1910, the party of the man in the White House has added Senate seats in just five of the 26 mid-term elections — none of them during a second term.
That record looks set to hold in Tuesday’s vote, which will be a referendum on Barack Obama, a lame-duck president whose approval ratings are the lowest since he took office.

A point I’ve been wanting to make about the coming midterm elections is that a lot of commentators seem to me to be operating with a misleading implicit model of how these things work. The way they see it, the status quo in any given pre-election House is a kind of equilibrium, and moving the House off that equilibrium requires force. Since the Democrats currently have a large majority, it follows that to move from a large Democratic majority to parity would require an enormous amount of force.

A lot of people are talking today about this ugly poll chart for Republicans: Gallup found that just 28% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party, down 10 points from last month and the lowest level since Gallup started asking the question in 1992. The shutdown is a political disaster for the Republican Party.